


Everything Unspoken

by RetroactiveCon



Series: Praying That It'll Be You [22]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: M/M, Past Hartley Rathaway/Eobard Thawne | Harrison Wells, Past Rape/Non-con, Trauma, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Victim Blaming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 11:55:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22849768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RetroactiveCon/pseuds/RetroactiveCon
Summary: “There was no reason to bother you. Really, it’s nothing, I should be over it by now.”He doesn’t particularly expect Barry to back off, but he isn’t prepared for him to ask, “What aren’t you telling me?” When he doesn’t respond, Barry presses, “I’m not oblivious, Hartley. This is about the Reverse, so it’s about faux-Wells."
Relationships: Barry Allen/Hartley Rathaway
Series: Praying That It'll Be You [22]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1562548
Comments: 11
Kudos: 87





	Everything Unspoken

**Author's Note:**

> Oh heck am I nervous about publishing this fic. The Reverse's visit mentioned at the beginning is basically what happens in 2.11 (I was going to write the actual plot, but Eobard refused to cooperate). Trigger warnings for discussions of rape, a whole lot of denial and self-blame from the survivor, a panic attack, and overall appalling coping mechanisms.

The day the Reverse-Flash comes back from the future is the worst Hartley can remember in a long time. Coming face-to-face with the man who hid behind Harrison Wells’ face for years is unsettling for all of them. Cisco retreats into himself and barely speaks a word until the Reverse is sent back to the future. Barry turns uncharacteristically snappish and harsh. Hartley likes to think he keeps up a calm façade, but he feels jittery and sick. Whenever he has a moment to himself, he finds himself chanting, “It’s fine, it’s fine,” under his breath. 

When at last they’re able to go home, Barry is keyed up, quick to snap and perfunctory in his apologies. Eventually, Hartley suggests, “Do you want me to put you to sleep tonight? You’ll have nightmares otherwise.” 

It’s as though a weight lifts from Barry’s shoulders. He slumps in his seat, face haggard, and murmurs, “Yes please. I don’t…I’ve dreamt her death so often. I can’t do it again.”

Hartley nods. The Reverse’s visit will bring back old nightmares for him too, but there’s no reason to let Barry know that. If he wakes in the night, he can take the opportunity to catch up on new literature, and as long as he’s careful with his suggestions, nothing he does will disturb Barry. “Then come on, sweet boy. It’s been a long day—you should rest.” 

While getting ready for bed, they trade nightshirts. Hartley wouldn’t have initiated it, but Barry stares so pitifully at the too-large STAR Labs t-shirt that he asks, “Do you want to swap shirts tonight?” 

“Yes please.” Given permission, Barry burrows into Hartley’s shirt. It’s comically huge on him (though, to be fair, it’s also comically huge on Hartley). The way he burrows into the excess fabric makes him look small and fragile and hopelessly, painfully vulnerable. 

“Are you ready to sleep?” Hartley makes a show of crawling under the covers and acting as though he’s comfortable. He wants nothing more than to pull the covers to his neck and curl into a protective ball, but it would accomplish pitifully little. Nothing is wrong, he reminds himself, digging his nails into his forearm as additional incentive to calm down. It was never wrong in the first place. 

“I guess.” Barry burrows under the covers. He pulls the fuzzy blanket over his head like a hood and peers at Hartley from its depths. Under other circumstances, Hartley might reach into the fluffy cocoon to pet Barry’s face, but the last thing he wants is to intrude on Barry’s safe space. 

_Let him have what I didn’t._

Hartley shakes his head to chase away the thought. It’s fine, he reminds himself one more time. “Drop now,” he orders. 

Barry’s eyes flutter closed. His grip on the blanket hood relaxes and it slides back, baring his chin and cheek. Hartley quashes the desire to touch him. Instead, he keeps talking. 

“That’s it. Drifting deeper down, relaxing more and more.” At this point, he would typically reassure Barry that he’s safe. This time, such an assumption feels foolish. “Letting your mind go blank and quiet. You were worried today, but it’s too difficult to remember why.”

Lines of tension smooth from Barry’s face. Hartley tries to focus on that—on Barry and nothing else. No matter his faults, he can bring his sweet boy peace for a little while. 

“Instead of worries, I want you to remember something happy. Remember being at STAR Labs, surrounded by friends.” Hartley wants so dearly to pet him, not to soothe Barry but to ground himself. Instead, he wraps his fingers around his wrist and squeezes until it aches. Touch is bad and invasive and he won’t do that to Barry. “Remember Cisco’s laugh, Caitlin’s smile, Jesse’s energy. Remember Iris and Eddie stopping by to watch you train.”

The faintest hint of a smile flits across Barry’s face. Hartley takes it as a sign of a job well done. 

“Good,” he murmurs. “Let yourself get lost in that memory. It’s so easy to let your mind wander…so easy to fall asleep. And once you fall asleep, nothing will wake you until morning.” He feels a twinge of worry—what if there’s an emergency in the night?—before brushing it off. If something happens in the night, he’ll handle it. He’ll probably be awake anyway. “Just let yourself sleep, sweet boy.” 

It isn’t instantaneous; it never is. Hartley is able to watch Barry drift into an evidently peaceful sleep. Once his sweet boy is soundly sleeping, he closes his eyes and tries in vain to clear his whirling mind. 

Sleep doesn’t come easy, and it certainly doesn’t last. He wakes just after midnight with a cry lingering on his lips and bolts out of bed. His legs shake and almost give out, but thankfully, he doesn’t fall. Upright is safe, is a defensible position. Lying down is vulnerable and trapped and he can’t be trapped again. 

“Stupid,” he accuses himself. “Nothing is wrong, you ridiculous creature, so pull yourself together or I’ll _make you.”_

Behind him, Barry gives a little snuffly snort that sounds alarmingly like he’s waking up. Hartley whirls around, an apology on his lips, to find his sweet boy still soundly asleep. 

“Good.” He digs his fingers into his arm. “That gives you until morning to remember how _stupid_ you’re being.”

He’s too jittery to focus on a task. Trying to distract himself has never worked and will only make him more frustrated. Instead, he forces himself to stretch out on the mattress. Over the panicked thrum of _badnotoovulnerabletoodangerous,_ he settles on his back and stares up at the ceiling. 

“Nothing happened,” he reminds himself again. “Or at least nothing you didn’t beg for a thousand times prior, you _whore._ Think how fucking selfish you’re being, spiraling over nothing while Barry needs your support. Pull yourself together.”

It doesn’t help. Panic mingles with self-loathing into a strangling haze that kills any semblance of a coherent thought. Spiraling indeed, he manages to think. If he doesn’t find a way to pull himself out of it, he’ll break down. Not only can he not afford that, but (he punctuates this by digging his fingertips into his thighs) it’s the height of absurdity to break down over nothing. 

Above him, there’s a glint of ruby light. He freezes, heart pounding in his throat, every nerve screaming at him to get on his feet and prepare to fight. It takes altogether too long to realize the red glow isn’t speedster lightning; it’s the first rays of dawn filtering through the curtain. 

“Oh,” he manages brokenly. He clenches his fists in the covers, but the fabric is too soft to ground him. Instead, he slips his hands under the covers and kneads his thighs. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

At his side, Barry makes a soft, contented sound and cuddles closer to him. The weight of his arm as it drapes over Hartley’s belly is too much. He bolts out of bed, nerves jangling, skin feeling too tight and too sensitive and _wrong._ This time, the movement wakes Barry. 

“Hart?” 

“It’s nothing!” His voice comes out shaky and too sharp. He forces himself to draw a deep breath and try again. “It’s nothing, sweet boy, go back to sleep.” 

In hindsight, speaking was the worst thing he could have done. His voice betrays his panic, and Barry can hardly fail to notice. He’s at his side in an instant, extending gentle hands to cuddle and soothe him. Hartley flinches away.

“It’s not nothing.” Barry’s worried face is highlighted in crimson. The eerie similarity to the Reverse does nothing to calm Hartley’s racing heart. “You had a nightmare, didn’t you?” 

Hartley looks down at the floor. 

“You didn’t sleep,” Barry realizes. “You put me to sleep and stayed awake all night, upset, didn’t you? Hartley, why—” 

At least that he can answer. “There was no reason to bother you. Really, it’s nothing, I should be over it by now.” 

He doesn’t particularly expect Barry to back off, but he isn’t prepared for him to ask, “What aren’t you telling me?” When he doesn’t respond, Barry presses, “I’m not oblivious, Hartley. This is about the Reverse, so it’s about faux-Wells. I know there’s something you don’t wanna talk about, but if it’s doing this to you…”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” he scoffs. His fingers splay, trying to push some of the nervous energy out of his too-tight skin. 

“You can’t even look at me.” Barry steps closer. He doesn’t try to touch him, but even the reduced space between them sends Hartley scurrying back. “Something is wrong, and it’s been wrong all this time and you won’t tell me. I’ve respected that, I haven’t asked, but this…I can’t help if you won’t even—”

“What do you want me to say?” Hartley snaps. He ought to stop there, but the words pour out of him like discharge from a necrotic wound. “That he raped me?” The knowing sorrow in Barry’s eyes is too much. How long has he known, and why would he stay with Hartley if he did? “That’s what you want me to say, isn’t it? That he raped me.” 

Barry sighs. He doesn’t say anything, and the understanding silence is worse than horrified exclamations. Hartley keeps talking, desperate to provoke some kind of reaction—the more repulsed, the better. He deserves nothing less. 

“He _didn’t._ He took me down—after he fired me, he kept me in the same room he kept Eddie. He needed me quiet, he needed to make sure I didn’t talk, so he locked me up.” He can still feel the ropes around his wrists. He squeezes his left wrist until it flares with pain, trying to chase away the memory. “And while I was down there, he had sex with me. It wasn’t anything we hadn’t done a thousand times before. And yeah, I said no, for the first time in years I said ‘no,’ but that doesn’t matter. I’d have lost my mind if he didn’t…” His voice breaks. He clears his throat and tries again. “Three months I was down there. If he hadn’t touched me, even if it was just to fuck me, I’d have lost my mind. And that’s what matters, that I can admit I needed it, so it wasn’t…rape.” 

“You said no.” Barry sounds heartbroken. Sweet, naïve boy. Of course he thinks that’s what matters. 

“For all the good that did me.” Hartley shudders and wraps his arms around himself. “I told you, it doesn’t matter. It’s almost two years in the past now, and like I said, it was nothing. I need to get the hell over it.” 

“Forcing yourself through it won’t do anything.” Barry keeps his voice low and soft, not quite cooing but not far from it. Hartley hates him for it, and he hates himself for the way it soothes him. “If you haven’t let yourself process it, it’s just going to…”

“There’s nothing to process,” he scoffs. “You, on the other hand—”

“No, don’t make this about me.” Barry shakes his head. “I know what he did to me was cruel and terrible and scarred me for life. I haven’t come to terms with it, but at least I’ve processed it. You haven’t even given yourself that.”

“I can’t!” Hartley snaps. He staggers against the wall and huddles there, grounding himself with the press of plaster against his side. “It was my fault and I deserved it and I’ve told myself that _so fucking often_ and that doesn’t make it better!”

“It wasn’t your fault.” Barry watches him with those big, sickeningly earnest eyes. Hartley is seized by the fleeting but powerful urge to sonic-blast him. Let him remember what kind of man he’s pitying. Maybe then he’ll be quicker to apportion blame. 

“It was.” Hartley can’t consider that he might not be at fault. He’s spent enough time being a victim—first of his parents’ bigotry, then his own lovesickness. He won’t be a victim of someone else’s perverted desires. 

“It wasn’t your fault,” Barry repeats. 

“It has to be.” If he considers that he might not be to blame, he’ll break down. He can’t be a victim again. 

“It wasn’t.” Barry does the cruelest thing he can. “If that happened to me, would you say it was my fault?”

No, and he knows it. “That’s different.”

“How?” Barry tilts his head. 

Because Barry is sweet and good and has done nothing to deserve it. Hartley knows all too well what kind of response that will get him. “You wouldn’t have been stupid enough to whore yourself out to him in the first place.”

“So you think you deserved it because you had sex with him before?” Barry shakes his head. “So if you had sex with me over my protests, even if I begged and safeworded and everything, I’d deserve that because I slept with you before?”

No. The other way around, though—if Barry ignored Hartley’s reluctance—would be fine. The common denominator in those situations is Hartley, who’s more than earned whatever sexual misfortunes befall him. “Of course not!” 

“Then why is it different for you?”

It has to be. There has to be some bizarre alchemical property rendering Hartley unworthy of the right to say ‘no.’ What property, he has no idea, but it must exist. “I-I…”

“Don’t know,” Barry finishes softly. 

Hartley shakes his head. He needs to spot the difference, like one of those children’s puzzles he and Jerrie used to do, but all the differences he can see are things Barry will deny. “It doesn’t matter,” he whispers. His voice shatters on his tongue. He can’t be close to tears; he doesn’t deserve to cry. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine,” Barry coaxes. “And it’s okay to not be fine.”

A sob bubbles up and out of his throat before he can stop it. He claps both hands over his lips, trying belatedly to push it back down. He refuses to cry. He’s breaking down—he can feel tremors running through his limbs, so strong it’s hard to keep his balance—but he’s not going to cry. 

“Hey.” Barry reaches out to him again. This time, Hartley presses into his arms without thought and clings, trying in vain to use Barry’s strength to fight back the tears gathering in his eyes. “It’s okay to not be okay.”

Hartley’s mind goes completely blank of everything except the need to be rid of this—the breakdown, the memories, all of it. He’s aware of babbling but not of his words. Whatever he says, it makes Barry squeeze him more tightly and whisper meaningless reassurances. “I’m here” blends with “I don’t blame you,” repeated over and over until Hartley dares to believe it. He might not be able to stop blaming himself, but maybe Barry doesn’t blame him. 

Sometime during his breakdown, they move to the bed. Hartley stiffens at first, unable to shake the association of lying down with helplessness. Rather than lie down, they sit on the edge, and Barry pulls blankets around them until they’re cocooned in warmth. It doesn’t stop Hartley’s trembling, but it gives him the chance to pull the blankets over his face and hide until the tears stop. 

“I know it’s never gonna be better,” Barry murmurs, “but do you at least feel more okay now?” 

Reluctantly, Hartley nods. It shouldn’t have taken a breakdown to get him to this point. When he says so aloud, Barry murmurs, “No, but you suppressed it for so long…I don’t know if you would have processed it any other way if you weren’t forced to. Which, I didn’t mean to push you into telling me things.”

Hartley musters a watery laugh. “You wouldn’t if I hadn’t been a wreck when you woke up.”

“I wouldn’t if you acted like you had any coping mechanisms,” Barry corrects. “But you weren’t even willing to acknowledge what happened.”

That makes Hartley scoff. “I acknowledged the kidnapping part. Why else do you think I held such a grudge against faux-Wells?” 

Barry purses his lips. It’s clear that he doesn’t think the kidnapping was the key point, so Hartley clarifies, “If I wasn’t trapped and held against my will, it wouldn’t have been…that bad.” 

Barry leans his forehead against Hartley’s. Unlike earlier, when such proximity would have overwhelmed him, the gentle touch feels nice. “You’re gonna need to work through this more. I’m not gonna push you again…”

“Unless I spiral,” Hartley intuits. 

“Well, maybe.” Barry nudges their noses together. “But if you want to talk, I’ll listen. If you can process _constructively_ by yourself, that’s good too.” 

Hartley snorts. He can’t pretend this conversation never happened, although he would like to; neither can he convince himself that it will fix his destructive coping mechanisms. As little as he likes to admit it, he’s probably going to need to ask for Barry’s help. 

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Barry agrees. 

Reluctantly, Hartley asks, “…Can you cuddle me? I didn’t sleep last night, and…it might help. You. Being with me.”

He needn’t have worried about asking. Barry is grateful for any excuse to cuddle, and he’s all too happy to wrap Hartley in protective arms and hold him. It’s hard to feel unsafe when he can burrow his face into Barry’s chest and focus on the hum of his heartbeat. 

“Better?” Barry checks. 

“Hmm.” Hartley feels surprisingly calm already. “Last night, everything came back so strongly. It’s…” He fights back a yawn. “It’s not like that now.” 

“If I talk you to sleep like you do for me, do you think that will help?” 

The concept is mostly cute—Barry is already in a receptive state when Hartley talks him to sleep, and right now, Hartley feels anything but receptive. Still, it will be better than silence with his thoughts. “You can try.”

“Okay. So if I say something like…close your eyes and remember our lazy day, does that work?” 

Hartley nods. “Hmm, although it won’t work as well if you keep asking me questions.”

“Okay.” Barry shifts into a more comfortable position and tries, “Remember back to our lazy day. Remember being curled up together, laughing, comfortable. Remember being safe, and know that you’re just as safe now.”

Hartley barely catches the end of the sentence, half-lost in memories of watching Barry dance. They’re tinged with guilt—horrible creature, watching and wanting and going to contaminate Barry’s innocence—but it’s not as urgent as it sometimes is. Instead, it’s countered by the ease of Barry’s voice, the unflinching comfort of his touch. He knows now, and he could have recoiled. He didn’t; he stayed. 

_Stayed_ and _safe_ mingle into a sleepy, comfortable haze. Hartley drifts to sleep with Barry’s voice lulling him, and when he jolts awake before noon with the tail end of a nightmare on a loop in his mind, Barry is there to comfort him. It’s more than he would ever have allowed himself—more than he deserves—but he wants to enjoy it while it lasts.


End file.
